This invention relates to an apparatus for cleaning a dirty gas stream and more particularly to a wet scrubber having a new, useful, and unobvious scrubber baffle arrangement therein.
Many different types of wet scrubbers for cleaning dirty gas streams are known where a wash scrubbing solution is sprayed into the gas stream with the liquid droplets from the scrubbing solution colliding with the dirty particulate matter in the gas stream and thereby removing the particulate matter from the gas stream by means of absorption and agglomeration. Scrubbing of the gas in this manner requires a large consumption of energy as well as a large amount of scrubbing solution. Also, the flow rate of the dirty gas stream entering and leaving the wet scrubber may vary thereby changing the gas velocity in the scrubber, this change in velocity in turn reducing or increasing the pressure drop across the scrubber section of the wet scrubbing device. Thus, many types of scrubbing sections have been devised in order to maintain the pressure drop in the section at predetermined values, one of the most common being a venturi scrubbing device. However, in most of these known methods and apparatuses of the prior art, the amount of scrubbing solution and the size of the cross-section of the scrubbing section are not always adapted to the particular gas throughput.